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Sunday, January 5, 2014

January Destinations: Bangkok And The Maldives

In a couple of hours we'll drive up to the Vancouver Airport on this gloriously sunny day and park our car at the Vancouver Airport Hilton, where we're staying overnight.

Tomorrow morning we start a fairly major travel adventure by flying from Vancouver to Seattle to Narita Japan to Bangkok Thailand:

Air Canada YVR-SEA on a Dash-8 (pretty well right over our Birch Bay home)

All Nippon Airways (ANA) SEA-NRT, our first flight on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner

Thai Airways NRT-BKK, our first flight on the Airbus A-380

After several days in Bangkok we fly onward through Singapore to Malé, the capital of The Republic of the Maldives

January 13 Singapore Airlines BKK-SIN-MLE 

We overnight there at the Hulhumale Inn and then take a very expensive seaplane ride to the Conrad Maldives, where we stay for six nights before flying home:

January 21 Singapore Airlines MLE-SIN-ICN (Seoul), connecting to Air Canada ICN-YVR. 

We're in C (Business) or the equivalent all the way, other than the Dash-8 and the seaplane. We've flown Thai before domestically in Economy within Thailand and were impressed. We hear great things about ANA. It'll give us a chance to sample a couple of airlines - and planes - new to us, and have little doubt as UA flyers that we'll be happy.

Wouldn't you know it though? Bangkok is experiencing widespread political demonstrations against the government in power. Coincidentally, the opposition has already announced plans to 'shut down Bangkok' January 13, the very day we depart. 

We'll see what develops but we have found the Thai people to be very hospitable to their guests on our previous visits and remain hopefully confident about our itinerary.

We'll still keep our fingers crossed and follow the situation in the Bangkok Post and elsewhere.

Oh, and the Conrad and all of our flights (other than darned seaplane) are on points. If you look up the menus prices there you'll see a hamburger at the bar priced at about $28. One of their restaurants just captured Number 6 on a list of the 10 most expensive restaurants in the world

Now you know why we're taking a 2 1/2 pound can of Costco peanuts along for the ride and virtuously deciding to do some dieting in early 2014.




4 comments:

Gregory said...

Sounds like quite the adventure -- both the "getting there" and the "being there"; enjoy!

I'll be departing SIN for NRT on the 21st, but should be well on my way by the time you make it to SIN.

Kathy and Brian said...

How early? We're transiting there 7:15-8:30 a.m.

Gregory said...

UA 804 is scheduled to depart at 07:00. Perhaps we'll pass on the runway.

Kathy and Brian said...

Darn! We don't wish a delay for you but we'll try to wave as we're landing at 7:15 a.m. It makes one wonder again how many times we're very near to folks we know and just missed them.